CastleVille Lead Designer Leaving Zynga for Bonus XP

According to a report from Gamasutra, the lead designer for the web-based game Castleville, Dave Pottinger, has announced that he is leaving Zynga to lead his own recently founded company, Bonus XP.

Pottinger explained that the split was amicable, and “has more to do with the opportunity Bonus XP presented than anything about Zynga.” His decision to move onto Bonus XP was also influenced by his work with Ensemble Studios, where he led and helped design multiple Age of Empires games and Halo Wars.

“By the end of Ensemble,” he explained, “I was leading Halo Wars with the entire studio on the team. CastleVille was another team of around 80 people. While I got a lot of satisfaction from those efforts, I’m looking to do something else these days.”

No games have been announced by Bonus XP so far, but Pottinger hopes to create, in his words, “games that people will love and come back to time after time.”